South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue’s Engagement Team has picked up a major communication industry award.

The three-strong team picked up the Best Small Team award at the Comms2Point0 Unawards, a respected event celebrating the best in public sector communication.

The team’s main focus is on delivering campaigns which make people safer and reduce fires. Its work also involves improving the quality of internal communication across the service and developing its online and digital media channels, as well as performing traditional press office and marketing functions

The team’s key achievements in the last 12 months include:

• Delivering high quality behaviour change campaigns to make people safer, including an electrical safety campaign which helped reduce house fires by 27%
• Introducing a new programme of properly planned, properly measured internal comms campaigns, including a firefighter fitness campaign which resulted in 48% of staff committing to make long term lifestyle changes to improve their health
• Continuing to grow its social media channels making them amongst the best followed fire service accounts in the country, relative to population size

Corporate Communication Manager Alexander Mills, said: “This is the first time a fire service communication team was won this particular award, demonstrating that good quality public sector communication does not just belong to councils, health services and big Government departments. We’re a small team, but punch above our weight in terms of the work we deliver on behalf of our staff and communities in South Yorkshire.”